


pretty girls with bloodstained teeth

by Monstrous_Femme



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: F/F, Femslash February 2019, Monstrous, Niffin!Alice, The Magicians Femslash Week 2019, chaotic neutral margo, magicians femslash, some depictions of blood and death, women as monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 01:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17909573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrous_Femme/pseuds/Monstrous_Femme
Summary: “You’re angry,” Alice says. Margo opens her eye to see that the smile on Alice’s face matches the one in her voice. “And you’re right to be.”“If I’m angry, it’s because there’s amonsterwho seems to show up everywhere I go.”Alice lifts a finger and runs it along Margo’s cheek, leaving a trail of ice crystals down its path. “Oh, Margo,” she says, sugar in her voice. “You’ve never been as good a liar as you think you are.”





	pretty girls with bloodstained teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Magicians Femslash Week 2019.
> 
> Because I just really fucking love the monstrous feminine.

Blue flames. An inhuman scream.

And then, a girl with lighting under the surface of her skin.

And then, the ringing silence at the end of a story.

*

But the story doesn’t end.

*

The first time it happens, it’s the weight on the bed that wakes her. Weight, as though a creature like that could weigh anything, but she does; when Margo opens her eyes, she can see that the mattress has dipped downward beneath the shape of a body.

It’s the flickers of blue that tell her the shape is Alice. 

Well, as far as nightmares go, this is more interesting than the one where she has to take the Brakebills entrance exam wearing nothing but a very un-sexy bunny costume. Margo shifts into a seated position.

“You’re not here,” she says. Moonlight shimmers in through the window, just enough for her to see. “And I don’t care enough about you for you to show up in my dreams, so why don’t you fuck off and let me get back to the one where I’m sunbathing on a beach in Mexico?”

Alice smiles. Her teeth gleam white in the moonlight. They’re sharper than they used to be. 

“Is that _really_ what you think?” Alice asks. “Well, I suppose you were never the smart one.”

“Oh yeah?” Margo says, crossing her arms. “Because between the two of us, _I’m_ not the one who threw my life away without even looking for another option.” Her eyes are adjusting to the light now, and she can see Alice’s eyes. The pupils are tiny flecks swimming in a sea of blue-grey. She’d never seen Alice without glasses before.

“Fine. If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, I won’t tell you.”

Margo shrugs. “Up to you. _I_ didn’t ask to dream about you.”

In a flash, Alice has moved across the bed. She straddles Margo, clenching her fingers into her wrists. “You’re not dreaming,” she says, digging sharp nails into flesh. “See? It hurts. Now listen. I’m here with a warning, and then I’ve got more important things to get back to.”

The curtains quiver as she speaks, which would be a very cool effect in a horror movie for thirteen year-olds but much less impressive when you know it’s first-year illusion magic. Margo rolls her eyes. “In the past twenty-four hours we’ve fixed the Wellspring and negotiated a peace deal with Loria. What could you possibly have to warn me about? It’s fixed, baby girl. You’re too late.”

“You’re an idiot,” Alice says flatly. “The fairies will come for you, if Umber doesn’t destroy Fillory out of sheer boredom first. Figure out a way to fix things without killing him, will you? If magic gets turned off I’ll have to use my last days before I fade out getting revenge on you for being so stupid.”

“And how the hell would you—” Margo looks around the empty room. “I should have known you’d have to get the last word.”

*

Ember and Umber are carefully reunited. Magic remains intact. The story doesn’t end.

*

The second time, Margo is walking the woods by herself. The space where her eye used to be has scabbed over and itches, but she forces her hands to stay away from the patch. Light streams in between the trees. Eliot is at Whitespire, trying to keep the peace between Ember and Umber. Margo should be there helping him, but here in the crisp air with trees that reach higher than any she’s seen on earth, she can scream without being heard.

Sometimes, she really needs to fucking scream.

“You come here often?”

Margo whirls around, and there is Alice, sitting cross-legged on a mossy stump, still in that same pink dress she died in. Her skin is paler than Margo’s ever seen it. “I do, actually. What about you, invade other people’s privacy much?”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be living in world without magic right about now,” Alice says. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“I think we could have negotiated things without your creepy appearance in my bedroom, thanks.”

“You didn’t,” Alice says. She looks at her fingers as though she has much better things to do than be having this conversation. The sun shifts behind a tree, and for a moment, her nails seem to retract. “In that timeline, Ember kills Umber, Quentin kills Ember, and then there’s no magic and we’re stuck living out our days in hopeless bullshit. Oh, and Quentin finds a way to un-Niffin me. It’s bullshit. So right before any of that could happen, I split it.”

Any more of this and Margo’s about to develop a fucking migraine. “Split what?” She asks, forcing as much disdain and annoyance as she can muster into her voice.

The shadows of the trees are growing larger, spindly fingers across the forest floor.

“The timeline,” Alice says with impatience. “Quentin already had me in his un-Niffining machine. I wasn’t going to be able to stop him, so I created a timeline where he doesn’t do that. And since I’m so kind and altruistic, I gave you the warning about magic, too.”

“Right.” And now she’s here. A cold breeze moves through the trees, and Margo shivers beneath her cape. “Thanks for the intel, but I think we’re good here.” 

It’s still light enough to see the path. Margo goes back to walking, forcing her pace even and slow.

It wouldn’t do to show weakness.

It wouldn’t do to run.

“Don’t you want to hear what happens next?” Alice’s voice dances down the path, low and lingering. Against her better judgment, Margo turns. Alice is only inches from her. Margo can feel her breath on her face, see the sunlight reflecting though her eyes.

She keeps her voice steady. “Don’t tell me you fractured the narrative a second time. You’re a regular Jane Chatwin, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have to fracture time to know that you’re on the verge of war.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“I heard about King Idri getting turned into a rat before he and Eliot could—” she coughs delicately. “Consummate things. Word gets around. And if that marriage is no longer in the cards, well…”

Margo closes her good eye. There’s another gust of frigid wind, and she wraps her cape more tightly around her shoulders. Nothing Alice is saying is wrong. Things _have_ been tense with Loria, and Margo’s been _trying_ to say something about it, but nobody will listen. Nobody ever listens. With the gods running Fillory and the High King looking larger than life by the day, nobody’s willing to spare a moment for the High Queen’s opinion.

“You’re angry,” Alice says. Margo opens her eye to see that the smile on Alice’s face matches the one in her voice. “And you’re right to be.”

“If I’m angry, it’s because there’s a _monster_ who seems to show up everywhere I go.”

Alice lifts a finger and runs it along Margo’s cheek, leaving a trail of ice crystals down its path. “Oh, Margo,” she says, sugar in her voice. “You’ve never been as good a liar as you think you are.”

*

That night, Margo awakens in bed with a start. Her dream is on the tip of her mind, there and then gone, but an unseen force inside of her tells her to go to the dining room. She wraps a fur robe around herself and walks quietly through the castle, a candle in one hand.

She yanks open the door to the dining room. The candle falls from her hand, and goes out.

There, displayed on gold platters in the center of the table, are the heads of King Idri’s top five advisors.

*

“How could you?” Margo demands in a whisper so sharp that for a moment she’s scared she’ll wake someone. The moonlight filtering through the window leaves the room tinted blue. A fly buzzes around the table.

Alice watches it for a moment. The fly stops in its tracks, and falls to the ground. She leans down and runs a finger along the rim of a man’s neck, then pops it into her mouth and licks away the blood. “You’ll thank me later.”

“You mean later today when Idri storms the castle and accuses _Fillory_ of doing this?” Margo leans back against the wall. “Fuck, we’re going to have to go to war.”

“I’ve cleared the way for you!” Alice snaps. There’s something tight and jerky about her body, like the movements of an insect that’s missing a leg. “There’d be a war anyway, but how well do you think Idri will do with only Prince Ess to guide him? The kid knows nothing, and Idri’s never had to make difficult choices alone.”

“Well, you could have at least asked if this is what we wanted!”

“It’s too late to do anything about it.”

“You mean aside from fucking with time on a global scale? If you’re so set on going back and fixing everything, undo this!”

“Fuck you!” Alice says, sounding more like herself than she has since she died. Warm air moves across the room, bringing with it the scent of fresh rot. Margo hears more flies enter the room. “I don’t know how I did it, okay? I panicked, and the timelines split at the world’s weirdest moment and I was just lucky enough to be the Alice who ended up on this side of time. I can’t do it on purpose.”

Margo takes deep breaths, trying not to gag. “You’re not Alice at all, not any version,” she says. “Alice was smart. _Quentin_ could have come up with a better plan..”

The lightning beneath Alice’s skin is back, and the room is suddenly frigid. “If you could see as clearly as I can, you’d know this is the only helpful thing I could have done.”

“I never asked for your help.”

“No,” Alice whispers. She shifts so the moon is at her back, casting an elongated shadow across the dining room table. “But you will.”

*

Fillory is outnumbered four to one.

The Tribe of the Floating Mountain has four thousand troops, one insistent queen, and an eligible son.

There is a marriage, and blood strewn across a ceremonial arch, and for a moment, Margo wishes the story would end and she could be done with it all.

*

“Alice!” Margo yells. Her voice is lost to the forest. She can still feel clammy hands on her wrists. The drops of blood on her face freeze in the night air, but underneath, her body is on fire. It takes all her will not to scratch off her skin. “Alice, you motherfucker, you’d better come the fuck out here!”

“Yes?” a voice askes sweetly from behind her. Margo turns. Alice smiles with teeth so sharp they hurt to look at. Margo wonders how long they’ve been like that.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up here.”

“How could I stay away when you were calling for me?” Alice asks.

Margo reaches out to shove her to the ground, but her hands meet air and she almost stumbles off balance. She turns and sees Alice behind her.

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that if you want to hurt me.” Alice raises an eyebrow. “Why _do_ you want to hurt me, anyway?”

“Are you telling me you really don’t know? Wise, all knowing, Niffin motherfucker doesn’t know what she’s done?”

“Hmm. No. Unless you’re still upset about those advisors’ heads. Don’t tell me you couldn’t find a way to escape war with Loria?”

“Oh, we found a way all right,” Margo says. Her fingers fly to her wrists and she lets herself scratch, just for a second. She stops when she realizes she’s drawn blood.

Alice’s eyes flick downward, and she licks her lips. “Well, what was it?”

“An alliance with the Tribe of the Floating Mountain.”

“I suppose you had to marry Micah, then. Is that what you’re so worked up about? He’s pretty enough, in a boyish sort of way.” 

“No, that’s not what I’m fucking worked up about!” Margo shouts. A crow caws loudly overhead, and she silences it with a spell. “I’m pissed the fuck off because as soon as we got to the altar, Micah’s pre-pubescent brother murdered him so he’d get to take his place and now I’m married to psychotic pre-teen! What, you couldn’t be bothered to warn me about that one?”

Alice’s eye flash bright blue. “I didn’t know,” she says. Her voice is harsh and echoes in the empty air.. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well you fucking should be. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Alice asks, eyebrows arched. “I’ve already told you I can’t fracture time again..”

Margo grabs her wrist, and this time, her fingers make contact with flesh, if it can really be called flesh. It’s cold and seems to writhe beneath her hand, but she clings tight. “You killed five of the smartest men in Loria without breaking a sweat,” she says. The wrist pulses. A small flickers across Alice’s face. “Surely taking out one evil douchebag who can’t even grow a mustache shouldn’t be a problem.”

“But Margo,” Alice says, widening her eyes in mock innocence. “What if the Floaters don’t like what you’ve done to their prince?”

“Well, maybe they should have thought of that before having the most arcane marriage laws in the universe.”

In a flash, Alice’s wrist has escaped Margo’s grip. She faces Margo and puts both hands in hers, squeezing tightly. “I can help,” she says. “But on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You’re going to help me.”

Margo nods, and in a flash of light, the woods are gone.

*

Next it’s wide eyes, sharp teeth, a man pleading for his life before his blood spills out onto the cold stone floor of his bedchamber. Alice’s magic holds him back against the window, letting the moonlight illuminate the way his pupils dilate, but it’s Margo who wields the axe. The handle is slick with the sweat from her hands. It’s heavier than she expects it to be, but it moves so easily through skin and bone, like a needle through an earlobe.

Fomar tries to scream, but the sound is mangled and strange as his throat is split. He collapses to the ground. Blood splatters everywhere. A single drop lands on Margo’s lip. She brushes it aside. It burns where it touches her hand.

“You could have taken his voice, you know,” she says, turning back to Alice and putting her hands on her hips. “Somebody could have heard.”

Alice smiles, eyes cold and blue, and it might be the most gorgeous fucking thing Margo’s ever seen. “Yeah, but I like it when they scream.”

* 

Then come the “how could you”s, the threats of war, the certainty of everyone from the advisors to the Floaters that this was Margo’s doing, and yeah, maybe this time it was, but she can’t bring herself to feel sorry. Her face is cold as it moves towards winter but she can still feel the warmth of blood on her skin.

She can almost taste it.

* 

“Eliot’s pissed,” she tells Alice. It’s been snowing outside for days, and Margo hasn’t left the comfort of her room once. She’s lying across her chaise lounge while Alice sits hunched on the windowsill. She’s lost track of the number of times they’ve been together this way. “He keeps reminding me of how much he sacrificed, marrying Fen even though she’s a woman.”

She looks to Alice when there’s a response, but gets none. 

“He doesn’t get that it’s not the same,” she continues. “Fen may not be his type, but she’s a good person. Fomar was—”

Alice’s head snaps around so she’s facing Margo. “A murderous monster?” 

The words catch in Margo’s throat. She looks at Alice, the way her skin doesn’t seen to fit right over her body anymore. A metallic taste fills her mouth. “It’s just not the murder.”

“You don’t like being controlled,” Alice says. She turns back to her previous position and resumes her staring out the window.. “You don’t like that he forced you to marry him.”

“I should have found a different way out,” Margo says. She closes her eyes and falls back onto the couch. “Now instead of being at war with just the Lorians, we’re going to war with fucking everybody.”

Even with her eyes closed, she can hear the harsh screeches as Alice runs her nails down the window. “Wars happen because people are scared of their own powerlessness. If you could make them feel like they’ve won before the war even begins, you could probably stop the troops.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

Alice doesn’t answer.

“What do you do, anyway?” Margo asks, sitting up again so she can see Alice. “When you’re not staring out my window or out murdering everyone who’s ever wronged me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Humor me.” 

The sound of the fingernails becomes more grating, like Alice is removing the glass layer by layer. “Magic.”

“You could have done that even if you’d let Quentin un-Niffin you.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Then explain it.”

“I can’t!” Alice snaps, voice rising in pitch. For a moment, she seems both larger and smaller, like a giant trying to force her body onto too small a ledge. “Stop acting like I’m her, okay?”

“Who?”

“Alice! Your Alice, the one who’s nice and good and always has a rational explanation for her thoughts. I’m not her anymore! And I need to understand magic—I can feel it under my skin, all the time—it’s the only think that keeps me alive—and I’ll kill anyone who gets in the way of that, okay? I’ll kill you if I have to.”

Margo rolls her eyes. “Can you quit with the melodramatics? I’m not trying to get in the way of you learning magic.”

“You will,” Alice says. She hugs her knees. “One day, I’ll do something you don’t like, and then you won’t want me around anymore.”

“Right, and you’ll care so much about all that.”

“I will,” Alice says. “I like—I like having another person around, okay? I like you, I always have.”

“Of course you did.”

“Margo, I mean it.”

“Well, maybe I’d be more receptive to this whole thing if you hadn’t just threatened to kill me.”

“You don’t understand,” Alice says, and Margo doesn’t. But she understands the look in Alice’s eyes, the blue so deep she might drown in it if she’s not careful. She understands, for the first time, what Alice is doing here, and why she’s never asked her to leave.

She gets up off the chaise lounge and walks over the window. “Are you cold?” she asks, putting a hand on Alice’s shoulder. Outside, snow is swirling harder than before.

“I don’t get cold anymore,” Alice says, but she shivers. After a moment, her icy fingers creep up and intertwine with Margo’s, then gentle pressure a reminder that after everything that’s happened, they’re both here.

*

Eliot’s head falls into his hands. “We’re all going to die.”

“Not necessarily.” Margo’s heart is beating faster than it’s ever beat before, fasterr than when she’d asked out the cute girl with freckles in the eleventh grade, or when she decided to move across the country for college; hell, even faster than it had beaten when they’d faced the Beast. “You can exile me.”

Eliot stares at her like she’s just told him her shoes are Payless instead of Armani. “I’m sorry, how would that help anything?”

She reaches her hand across the table and takes his. “Think about it. You tell them it’s all my fault. Remind them that I wouldn’t marry Ess. Tell them I killed the advisors, if you want.”

“I thought you said that wasn’t you.”

“Do you really think I’d do something that dumb? All I’m saying is, tell them whatever they want to hear. And then tell them as High King you decided to send me away, forever, so I can’t cause any more harm, but please, won’t they give you a chance to make things right instead of fighting you over something dumb a woman did? And then give them whatever the hell they want not to go to war.”

Eliot’s fingers twitch on the table. “It’s an idea, I suppose.”

“Eliot, our people are going to die. It’s the _only_ idea.”

“And I’d be running things here on my own.”

Outside the window, Margo sees a flash of blue. For a moment, she thinks it might be Alice, but before she can tell for sure, it’s gone. She turns back to Eliot.

“Fen could help. She’d be a good High Queen. And the Fillorians like her, she’s one of them. It would make sense.”

Eliot nods, then rubs his eyes. The dark circles there have grown deeper in the past month than Margo’s ever seen them, worse even than their last few months at Brakebills.

She reaches over and adjusts his crown so it sits more firmly on his head. “It’s okay. Really. Exile me. Look like the big fucking hero.”

“What happens to you when I do that?” Eliot asks, his voice breaking.

“I don’t know,” Margo says, but she’s not sure how true that is. “But I’ve got this.”

Eliot leans in and kisses her on the forehead. “I know,” he says. “You always do.”

*

The carriage lets her out in the middle of a forest, a hundred miles from the Fillorian border. The woods feel empty and silent, but the caw of a crow reminds Margo that she’s not alone.

She picks a direction and starts to walk.

*

It’s only been an hour when she finds Alice, lying across what must have once been a unicorn. There’s blood trickling gently from its neck.

At the sound of Margo’s footsteps, Alice stands. “I thought you might come this way.” 

There’s blood smeared across her cheek. Margo reaches forward and gently rubs at it, but it only stains further.

“Leave it,” Alice says.

She nods.

“You found a way out of the war then.”

“I did.”

Alice seems to consider this. “Any idea what you’ll do next?”

Margo shrugs. “I thought maybe I’d come along with you. Since you clearly enjoy my company so much. I wouldn’t want you to get lonely.”

Alice’s eyes are ice crystals. They burn to look at. “Do you promise to remember I’m not her?”

“If you promise to give me a head start if you get bored of me and try to kill me.”

Half a smile graces Alice’s face, and she extends her hand. “It’s a deal.”

Margo reaches out and shakes it, then pulls Alice close and wraps her arms around her. Alice’s lips taste like cold metal, and Margo sinks into them. Everything about Alice’s body is sharp, from her bones to her teeth to the lighting in her skin, and as Margo slides her lips down to Alice’s collarbone, she wonders, just for a moment, whether her teeth have grown sharper too.

She pulls back, and licks Alice across the cheek where the unicorn’s blood has left its mark. It tastes like sweat and black licorice. Alice giggles and pulls her down to the forest floor. They kiss harder, so hard it hurts, and when they roll over so that Alice is on top, Margo opens her eyes. For a moment she can see time’s gears, the bare tree above her head growing leaves and pink flowers before disposing of them to return to its skeletal form.

It takes several minutes for her to notice that she’s been lying on a snowbank. The damp has penetrated her purple cape, but for some reason Margo doesn’t have the words to explain, she isn’t cold in the slightest.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @monstrous-femme on tumblr! Feel free to come say hi.


End file.
